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Posts tagged computer
Ep. 306 – Lance Fortnow’s “Golden Ticket”
May 1st
TOPIC: ”To P or not NP, that is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the electronic minds of men to solve their problems quickly, or to suffer the slings and arrows of non-deterministic machine solutions in polynomial time … “ Alright, admittedly we wind up a bit off topic this week (though not so far afield as to be Bowdlerizing Shakespeare) but we have an absolute blast interviewing author Lance Fortnow about whether P will ever be equal to NP and solve all of life’s problems! A special shout-out goes to Lance, who was brave enough to join us physically, in-studio and take part in the whole show!
Jay Garmon joins us with some geek flavor and a fantastic geek trivia question too:
What sport was created in the Year 2000 by a single UseNet post?
No time at all for going off with multiple cool sites, but these are cool enough:
- Golden Ticket Book – One of many places to find out more about P, NP and Lance Fortnow!
- Computational Complexity – Lance’s long-running blog, and a great place to see what else is going on in theoretical computation.
We close out with our podcast only song of the week “One Day/The Reckoning Song”.
Ep. 276 – Mars Keeps Getting Curiouser and Curiouser
Aug 16th
TOPIC: Between that news, discussion on Best Buy, security issues, database protocol and our usual nonsense you could almost forget that we’ve been gone for nearly a month! Jay Garmon helps get us back up to date however, and even whips out another fantastic geek trivia question for us:
How many TRS-80′s were originally produced, and why was the number that small?
We have a themed “cool sites” this week, with a focus on apps that can be used for exploring your creative bent on the iPad. All are free and all can be found easily in the app store:
- Draw: Not a lot of feature here, but it does a great job at being a real simple pick it up and start drawing tool. Includes some tic tac toe and dots games for the kids too!
- Drawing Box: Lots of features and functionality here, and is geared towards a younger set, with stamps and brushes that they will love to play with.
- SketchBookX: The best of the bunch if you are serious about drawing something on your ‘pad, this entry from Autodesk is a truly full featured drawing app with layers, color wheels, custom sizing of brushes and shapes, plus more!
Podcast only song of the week is the mellow “Misread” by the Kings of Convenience!
Ep. 257 – 9 Algorithms That Changed the Future
Jan 25th
TOPIC: Dave and Mike have a great time, joined by John MacCormick discussing his new book “9 Algorithms That Changed the Future”! John breaks down the basics of everything from Euclid’s algorithm to modern day cryptography, web search and compression and somehow makes it accessible and easy to understand. If you’ve ever been mystified and impressed by all the goings-on that must be happening in that electronic box you stare at all day, this is the show to listen to!
Jay Garmon jumps in gives us some great trivia too:
What Apollo 1 crew practical joke became accepted NASA policy as a tribute to the loss of that mission’s crew?
Coolsites of the week included:
- The evergreen TechTalk Facebook page http://facebook.com/techtalkwrlr (don’t forget to “like” us)!
- Hipmunk comes up again, and of course …
- You’ll want to find out more about John MacCormick’s fantastic book here.
Podcast only song is the smooth “Swim Until You Can’t See Land” by Frightened Rabbit off of their Winter of Mixed Drinks album.
Ep. 186 – Here, There, Whatever!
Apr 16th
TOPIC: Mike blabs on and on about his jetsetter traveling lifestyle trying to impress us all with how fabulous it is going to conferences all the time. It doesn’t work, but Dave manages to squeeze some good news in here and there too!
After answering our burning questions about the Fringe reference to Back to the Future with Eric Stoltz, Jay Garmon comes through with another great geek trivia question:
Before Windows, before MS-DOS, what was the FIRST operating system released by Microsoft?
Then we’ve got a theme for our coolsites this week – web sites that will help you get all “churched up” for Easter … some great Christian and Bible reference sites:
Wouldn’t be a complete show without the podcast only song of the week, so this week we bring you “Kill Monsters in the Rain” by Steel Train!
Episode 146 – Speed it Up! with Mike Miller
May 7th
TOPIC: Author and musician Mike Miller comes back to the show to talk to us about making the most out of that ‘dying’ PC. If you’re debating whether you should upgrade to a newer piece of equipment or if it’s possible to squeeze some more useful life out of what you’ve got, you’ll want to listen in this week! His tips and insight are also good in general, and you’ll be sure to pick up something of value even if you don’t get his highly recommended book Speed it Up! A Non-Technical Guide for Speeding Up Slow Computers
We also spend a lot of time with our good friend Jay “Geek Trivia” Garmon, who informs us that WRLR now has an exclusive lock on the Geek Trivia output from Louisville!
In addition to all of that excitement, we’ve got our cool sites of the week:
- Panda Cloud Antivirus – Free, light, outstanding quality? Wow, how better to sum up what we look for in a cool site of the week! Get your hands on this necessary piece of software and protect your computer today …
- Windows Live SkyDrive – More very cool microsoft cloud stuff, this gives you 25GB of free online space. That’s right, that’s a capital G for giga and a lower-case f for free! You’ll need an office live account, but guess what? Those are free too!
Our podcast only song of the week this week is Kinky’s remake of Mexican Radio. And don’t forget to check out Mike Miller’s Speed it Up! or any of his other many excellent tomes!
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